Saturday, April 26, 2014

"Fun" Geometry and Mountain Biking Culture: some preliminary thoughts

 I posted this on the Rivendell list in response to a thread started by a long-time Rivendell owner who recently bought a Surly Krampus for off-road rides, but isn't satisfied with it, especially the way it climbs. 

I don't want to add just another voice in the peanut gallery, but I have had similar experiences recently.  I bought my first "real" mountain bike earlier this year, a pretty standard aluminum hardtail 29er from Raleigh.  By "pretty standard," it's geometry is the kind of mass-market stuff that Rivendell geometry departs from: steepish seat tube angle, short chainstays, long top tube, relatively low bars.  To keep the reach in check, I even sized down a size from the recommended, very non-Riv indeed.  Previous to this, a lot of my off-road exploring had been done on a Long Haul Trucker with Albatross bars, so probably somewhat similar to your experience on your Atlantis. 

At first, I was pleasantly surprised by the climbing ability of the Raleigh, but in retrospect I think it was the fact that it had the lowest gears of any bike I've ridden recently, as well as the traction afforded by 29x2" knobbies versus the 700x42 file treads on the LHT.  On longer rides with a lot of climbing, however, I definitely get worn out on that bike.  I think a lot of this is down to the riding position: the wide, low flat bars force me into one position, with very little options for changing my hand position or back angle.  I plan to cut down the bars and add Ergon grips with built-in barends to address some of this.  However, especially off-road, not only does the component spec of the bike force me into this low position, but its geometry demands it in order to maintain traction and handling.  Specifically, the short chainstays and long front center/top tube force a certain approach to climbing.  I need to lean low over the handlebars and sometimes slide forward on the seat in order to keep traction on that front wheel and be able to properly direct the bike.  The times that I've had to put a foot down going uphill on this bike, it hasn't been because I've run out of gas, but because the front wheel has started to wander off my line and I haven't been able to reign it back in. 

If you read mainstream mountain biking mags and bike reviews, right now there is kind of a self-reinforcing obsession with this type of geometry on the part of designers and reviewers.  People are obsessed with short chainstays, long front centers, short stems; they describe such geometry as "aggressive," "playful," and "fun" (that "aggressive" and "playful" are synonyms for each other is indicative of the general techno-cultural problem with mountain biking these days).  And I think this is further reinforced by the type of riding featured in MTB magazines and videos: high speed, big jumps, riding up and down ledgy technical features.  All of this leaves those of us who want to get away for a few hours, to enjoy the escape and beauty of riding trails for a few hours but not feel like we're riding out of the depth of our bicycles, out in the cold somewhat. 

If you look at the Surly marketing around the Krampus, you'll see that they designed this bike very much in the mainstream conception of "fun" geometry: short chainstays, even with giant tires; long front center/TT, short stem, low-ish handlebars.  A lot of the early photos of the bike featured guys wheelieing them and boosting them off jumps.  I wonder if optimizing the geometry around this type of riding has made it not as ideal for your type of riding, specifically grinding up long, steep climbs.  Perhaps an ECR, with it's touring geometry, might be different. I've never ridden one, and I've only ridden someone else's Krampus around the block, so I'm not really in a position to say.  Certainly, I'm intrigued by the ECR myself; even though I don't really see myself doing long bikepacking tours, the fact that it's geometry, at least on paper, might allow a position closer to that of my LHT, has me interested.  I'm also super interested to try the long-chainstayed Hunqapillar proto featured on the BLUG a few weeks ago: high handlebars at a comfortable reach, relatively slack seat tube, long chainstays to keep everything planted even while maintaining an upright riding position. 

For the moment, I've accepted that my current MTB is less than ideal from a fit perspective, and I appreciate it more for its ability to help me stay in control going downhill, much the same as you. 

Saturday, April 5, 2014

Richard Sachs on Being Confounded

I've said that I never want to be the type of blogger that just re-posts what other people produce, but I felt moved today by a short post on Richard Sach's blog.  He's been posting short passages from older writings recently, and in general he's always had fascinating things to say about the life of being a framebuilder.  This is a part of an answer he gave to an interview question in 2010 (so, after close to four decades of framebuilding) regarding how long he expected to keep working. 
I am routinely confounded by the process. The lack of confidence or the deeply rooted feeling that, since I am self-taught, something is missing – this is an emotion that envelopes every working day I have and every frame I build. Because of this simple fact that I am never completely content with what passes as a finished bicycle, I continue to come in every Monday to see if I can redeem myself for all my past gaffes, miscues, and blunders. It sounds so drama queen-esque typing out these words, but this is how I feel. If it ever changes, maybe the word “retire” can be used in a sentence. For now, I have many years worth of work in which to see if I can possibly get it nailed.
I find these words of incredible value to myself as a basically self-taught bicycle mechanic, who routinely finds himself confounded by the technology presented to him (see, for instance, my last post).  I take comfort in the fact that being confounded by the technology, by the process, is not antithetical to a skillful practice, a practice that can develop and grow over decades. Indeed it, it might be a key part of such a practice.

Wednesday, April 2, 2014

Stable Changes and Technological Love/Hate

I concluded my last post with these words:

"The truth is, because of some other priorities in my life right now, any major bike projects will probably wait for a year or two, so this is my stable as it will be for a while.  And I'm pretty satisfied with it."

One of the things I find funny about this whole blogging thing is how once I write down how I feel about something, I kind of let go of it and my feelings quickly change.  The above statement is a perfect example.  Only three months or so after saying I had stabilized my stable, I had sold my Casseroll road bike and used the funds to buy my first "real" mountain bike, a Raleigh Talus 29 Comp, in size Large (19").  Quite rightly, the purchase of my first 29er coincided with my 29th birthday in early February.  Here it is, my 29er for 29, in all of its glory:

A 29er for my 29th birthday
 This bike represents a major departure from bike business as usual, for me, being my first hands-on experience with a number of technologies:

-Aluminum frame construction.  I've basically only bought steel frames until now, enjoying the durability and smooth ride.  With 29x2" tires and a sprung fork (see below) on this beast, I'm not really worried about shock absorbing qualities of the frames as much.
-Suspension!  Specifically, a RockShox XC 32 fork with Solo Air spring.  Nothing to write home about for MTB geeks, but just quality enough and adjustable enough that I feel like I'm getting a sense of what modern suspension technology has to offer.  It has a compression lockout.  I use it often.
-Fully modern drivetrain with indexed "rapid fire" shifters, matched derailleurs (Shimano Deore "Shadow," meaning that the rear derailleur has a smaller lateral profile that's less likely to get smacked into rocks), and outboard bearing BB with two-piece crankset (again, Deore).  So far so good on this front.  I don't mind the wide Q-factor, in fact, it feels good, and I do appreciate the fact that my bearings aren't pressed into the frame, so they're easy to replace.  The only problem has been a bit of front derailleur tire rub in the granny gear, which is more of a frame design or adjustment issue.  
-Hydraulic Disc Brakes, specifically the Shimano BR-M395's.  As far as I can tell, this is a non-series OEM brake that is roughly matching the Deore/Alivio quality of the rest of the bike.

This last one, especially, has been the biggest love/hate technology for me on this bike.  In part, I bought this bike in order to give myself more experience and make myself more comfortable working on these types of technology, since I am increasingly called upon to set up and service them in my job as a mechanic.  This is especially true of disc brakes, since they are rapidly becoming the norm for cargo bikes, our bread and butter at the shop where I work.

Marincello trail

First, the love.  I bought this bike because I have a burgeoning interest in off-road riding, fueled by my explorations over last summer and fall on the Trucker.  And living up to my expectations, the 29er is by far the most capable off-road machine I've ever ridden, giving me much more confidence on the fire trails I had previous ridden on the Trucker, and opening up new riding opportunities on technical trails I might have thought twice about riding before.  In particular, I've loved the single track in Joaquin Miller Park above Oakland, and I said this on the Rivendell list after my first ride there with some riding companions from the list:


"..,being a relative novice to technical off-road riding, I was thankful for every last ounce of tire volume, fork travel, and hydraulic fluid I had, and totally humbled by the skills of my companions on their steel all-rounders."

Joaquin Miller overlook.

The hydraulic disc brakes are no small part of that.  When I'm working my way down a steep and bumpy descent I feel really in control, always having the braking power I need and with the braking surface separate from the rim, never worrying about over-braking or rim damage.  I feel the same way about the fat tires and the suspension fork: they let me build up speed when I'm confident, but they also let me slow down and keep my speed in check when the trail is sketchy, to take things at a pace that my novice off-road skills can keep up with.

But then, there's the hate.  While the technologies on the new bike have increased my confidence as a novice off-roader while riding, as a mechanic they've taken all of my skills to get set up satisfactorily.  The first few weeks of the new bike's life were marked by many multi-hour sessions in the shop, trying to get everything dialed just so.  The brakes were the biggest part of this; they took a long time to where they were hitting the rotor squarely and evenly from both sides, and not rubbing when released.  The standard "pull the levers with the calipers loose to self-align, then tighten caliper mounting bolts" simply didn't work, and I tried everything to get them to align properly: advancing and lubricating the pistons, pushing them back and pumping the levers to let them find their natural position, facing the mounts, etc.  In the end, I got them to work, but it was a long process.

All of this reinforces something I've learned about disc brakes: when everything is spot on, they work great.  However, when things are off just slightly, they don't work nearly as well.  Compared, for instance, to a set of V-brakes, they have fewer means of adjustment.  A hydraulic disc brake caliper has no adjustment for pad position other than the overall position of the caliper, while even the cheapest v-brakes have independent adjustments for the position and angle of each pad, not to mention the spring tension in each arm and overall cable tension.  Furthermore, these adjustments have ranges of multiple centimeters, while the whole travel of disc brakes happens in fractions of millimeters.   In the "less advanced technology" of v-brakes, there are built in means to deal with imperfection, and an experienced mechanic can still adjust cheap brakes to work surprisingly well.  As I work with mass-produced disc brakes on mass-produced frames, I just don't find the same means to deal with the imperfections inherent in things built to certain quality-control and cost margins.  That frustrates me.

All of this makes me curious to try a bike designed for off-road riding that uses simper technology.  When I was describing how much control I felt off-road while on the new bike, a coworker asked, "Yeah, but how much of that is tires?"  How would a bike with similarly knobby 29x2" tires, but with a rigid frame/fork and rim brakes feel off road?  Is over-braking and rim damage actually a concern?  However, there is almost no choice when it comes to mountain bikes in terms of braking systems, no chance to compare braking systems on the same bike.  Virtually all mass-produced mountain bikes use disc brakes exclusively, and hydraulic brakes are rapidly marching down the price points.  The only mass-produced 29er mountain bike frame that has mounts for both disc brakes and rim brakes, as far as I can tell, is the Surly Ogre. There are small production frames like the Rivendell Hunqapillar and upcoming Velo-Orange Camargue that use rim brakes, but with no fittings for disc brakes and more all-round-ish geometry, they are a commitment in a different direction.

There's not much out there for the the relatively novice, technologically skeptical, empirically curious off-road rider. 




(Having said all this, I'll probably post a glowing endorsement of hydraulic disc brakes in a couple of months).